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Nesting of the Yellow Wagtail.



flying about the aviary. Something had happened to the nest, but

what that something was I do not know to this day ; I suspect slugs

The despair of the male was quite touching ; perhaps some prophetic

instinct warned him that this would be his first and last attempt

to rear a family—at all events he died during last winter, having

reached more than the usual span of life of a captive softbill.


This summer the same female and a very fine male com¬

menced to nest early in July. Once again the characteristic love-

flight was seen in the aviary, but this male hovered over the female,

not over the nest. The nest was on the ground, close up to the

skirting of the aviary. The period of incubation w'as fourteen days

and the five eggs hatched on consecutive days. The female sat most

unsteadily, seldom remaining more than five minutes on the nest,

but, by concealing myself carefully in the aviary, I was able to

ascertain that the male always took her place when he fancied him¬

self unobserved. Without his assistance the eggs would never have

been hatched. The young, with long sprawly legs and some

yellowish down, seemed delicate little things and did not grow

well at first, being almost entirely fed by the female; the male

would brood them but he refused to feed with anything but flies.

The young began to look greyish in the pen-feather stage hut the

buff tips of the flights projecting beyond the quills gave the wings a

mottled appearance.


On the tenth day I extracted one youngster from the nest for

the purpose of a photo and a description. The crown and back were

huffish brown with buff tips to the feathers ; sides of crown dark

brown ; chin pale chrome, ditto eyebrow (well marked) and cheeks ;

under and around cheeks and a streak in centre of upper breast

dark blackish-brown ; wings brown ; lower and middle coverts con¬

spicuously tipped with warm buff; legs, feet and beak light flesh-

colour ; two outer rectrices huffish-white.


The note of the young is similar to that of the adults—a

faint witz-ee ” with the accent on the first syllable; the call-note

of the White Wagtail has the accent on the second syllable and

sounds to me like “ chis-sick.”


The young scattered in the long grass on the eleventh day

and I had great difficulty in finding one to show to a visitor (Dr.



